My name is Freddy Petrulli, I'm the Executive Director of the Foundation of Forensic Anthropology
of Guatemala.
We're single gunshot wounds to the head.
So this is a prime candidate for disability though.
I got involved in this by mistake.
I mean I met Clyde Snow in 1994 and you know he was working here since 1990 when he invited
me to come seeing what happened, meeting the communities, seeing the necessity of finding
a loved one that went missing for decades, it quickly drew me in and I fell in love with
the people mostly.
The work I've done affects everything else I do, I mean it has completely changed my
life.
It has, well the first thing, it has made me realize that I'm very fortunate and that
I grew up in this country and I was able to leave when I was nine but many of the families
that we work with are not as fortunate, they couldn't leave, they couldn't go.
A lot of them were executed, others were disappeared, others lived in the mountains without food
or shelter for years at a time.
So the first thing it makes me do, it makes me humble, it makes me realize how fortunate
I am and it also makes me feel very honored to be able to be in such a position of responsibility
that allows me to reunite families with the loved ones.
We look for the people that nobody else cares for, besides their loved ones.
All that pain and anguish helps us feel to continue the work because it has to continue.
I guess the most important part of it is whatever it was you, what would you want something
to do if someone in your family disappeared, if your son, your husband, your father disappeared.
What would you do?
What would you want someone to do?
And that's what we try to do.
Something so powerful consumes you.
The pain, the impotence, the sense of emptiness that every one of those family members have
flows through everyone that works here and we use that to channel it, to try to find
that disappeared and at the same time it gives us strength to be able to continue and that's
why I refuse to stop this work, I refuse to just let it go because I know that the second
we stop doing this here in Guatemala it will probably end.
The Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala has worked till today about 1,806 cases.
We have recovered over 7,000 remains and have identified close to 3,500 of those.
What has happened more recently is that we began to look for the people who had disappeared.
In Guatemala there's a difference between the people that were massacred, where family
members, witnesses know where the person is but have had to wait for decades to be able
to zoom the bodies and to rebury them properly.
In the case of the disappeared, people don't know where they are so we began this search
and I think that has been our greatest achievement, has been to be able to provide an avenue of
hope for the family members, to be able to search for the loved ones.
Going back I never imagined being where I am today, I mean when I started here there
was only five people and we really didn't know the extent of the damage, in other words
that there was 40,000 people disappeared or that 200,000 victims were the result of this
armed conflict.
So through the years everything that we accomplished was step by step and at the same time helping
so many family members to search for the loved ones, helping some of them to find their loved
ones and to be able to bury them in a dignified way.
Everything I think from the moment I came in 1995 to now has been an adventure and something
that I could have never imagined.
The work that we do changes lives at the very basic level.
It allows people to find truth, it allows people to come to terms with the terrible
reality that the loved ones are dead.
Everyone that we work with has the hope, still now, 33 years later, 34 years later they all
have the hope that their family member, their loved one will be alive but when they begin
to look for them with us without help they're accepting that they're dead.
So it changes them in that way that it makes them look into a reality that they avoided
for decades but when we do find them it's an explosion of emotions from happiness to
sorrow to empowerment, to relief, it changes every part of that person's being and then
what I think is important is that it allows that person to focus on their future.
There's a sense of responsibility in what we do and that sense of responsibility has
brought me in and allowed me to expand on the work that Clyde started.
My mentor always said Clyde, snow always said, bones speak softly but if you know how to
listen they tell a lot and with the bones, with the remains and the families because
you have to remember these families they're the heroes in this, not us.
Our role is miniscule, almost nonexistent.
Without the families pushing, without these brave women that have led the search for the
disappeared in Argentina and Chile and Guatemala, without these women we wouldn't be doing what
we do because what we're doing is at their service.
What the prosecution is doing is at their service.
